THE. AR. T GALLE.R.1E.5 T he Metropolitan Shows a Bequest - Abstraction - Sculpturesque Glass AFTER the magnificent Havemeyer Col- lection, almost any bequest to the Met- ropolitan Museum would be an anti- c 1 i m a x . So the ..s-" new M i c h a e 1 Friedsam Collection is something of a disappoin tmen t. The pieces range all the way from minor objects of art in crystal to specimens of French and Flemish Primitives; per haps the finest pain ting is a small head of Lionello d'Este by Roger van der Weyden. There is a very imposing galaxy of names in the collection, but the pic- tures themselves for the most part leave one a little weary and dejected. In this company, one warms to the smaller genre pictures; they seem both safer and finer than the paintings that are confessedly, "attributed to" Rembrandt. On the opening day, the Three Crones Appointed by the Gods to Look Gift Horses in the Mouth met in a corner of the gallery. One of them said: "Too bad these things went to the Metropolitan, which already has a surfeit. This loot would have been the making of a provincial museum." Another said: "But it is good to have even minor examples of great art. They are the hors d' æuvre that sharpen the palate for the banquet." The third: "The market has been combed pretty thin by now. Most of these things are leftovers and remnants." These scan- dalous harpies left me very little to say on my own account, except that Colo- nel Friedsam was fortunate in his choice of executors, for his original de- sire to have this very uneven collection main tained as a unit has been modified , I understand, so as to permit cer- tain objects to fill in the blank spaces in their appropriate departments. This is a victory for both art and common sense. NG ago, Kandinsky wrote a mani- festo on the necessity of giving painting the absolute values of music. Much has happened since that early creed of modernism was written but , Kandinsky, like Klee and Feininger, has kept pretty close to his oria-inal in- . . b tUItIons. The lesser exponents of ab- stract art often seem a little trifling and schoolgirlish: their paintings are the sort of thing any fairly ingenious mind might invent to combat an afternoon of boredom. But Kandinsky is an ar- tist of parts, and in the show at the Valentine Gallery he has kept his work on a high level of painting. His palette is brilliant: his compositions are some- times linear , sometimes a-eometric b ' sometimes plastic and suggestive, and they usually have freshness and vitality. If some of the flat designs are, in effect, only patterns for the arts and crafts, there are others that command atten- tion and satisfy interest in their own right. T HE show of Marinot's glass at the Brummer Gallery was good on two counts: the pieces, mounted on tall white cylinders, were handsomely pre- sented; and they were excellent exam- ples of what one may call sculpturesque glass. Marinot is a craftsman of the highest order, and he has been achiev- ing qualities in glass that the earlier workers did not seek or particularly recognize. While the Venetians and f the Persians sought to give glass the delicacy of a soap bubble, while the Bohemians sought to give it the bright planes of crystal, Marinot's method has been to use glass as a solid, often opaque or with an opaque backing: his bowls and bottles are inches thick, and at times have the visual effect of being still malleable, almost resinous. Instead of getting rid of air bubbles as flaws, Marinot multiplies them and utilizes them for color and texture. As interior --- - .- - _ _.. ----- -- L.' ,- - I .;:ló' It A\ J, t !---- LJ....:! b ' í . rID ûD rL f /11' f ., I ',' 1 I " . " , J 'I]ï II 1,\ . 'IV ;,,' -- , [ '. I / fIIt P''''' \ \ 'I'" rt t -- l l: ,t l' ' . - --- 79 R1CE WEAVE r- SOUTH E R.N G R.E ENS .. -ge"; / ".- at 1ße t &J!tO. Created for men's shirts" Rice Weave the new shadow flecked Lonsdale fabric now steps out in this weH fit- tins so If dress for Southern wear. Of course" Rice Weave fabric, like most fine shirtinss" is Sanforí%"cd"snrunk so the dress tubs without shrínldns. 2nd FLOOR efizes 12-20 . $6.50 Sponsored by Fashion MerehandisinU Bureau 40 WORTH STREET NEW YORK CITY -ß f..!!:--